Waste Collection Consultation
Martin Litherland, Waste Contracts and Development Manager, will give a short presentation to launch the waste collection consultation, and respond to any questions.
Minutes:
Martin Litherland, Head of Waste Collection, gave a short presentation following the recent launch of the council's waste and recycling consultation. He included the following points:
· the new council had inherited four different waste collection schemes across the county, which operated to different service levels and standards, and achieved very different recycling rates; residents in these areas had very different opportunities to recycle, which was unfair
· landfill tax was set to increase from £40 per tonne in 2009 to £80 per tonne in 2014, increasing by £8 per year
· the proposed new service would provide each household in Wiltshire with a 2 weekly collection of household waste, black box recycling, plastic bottles and cardboard, and a non-charged ‘opt-in’ garden waste collection
· leaflets were available at the meeting that provided additional information and also described the ways in which people could engage in the consultation , such as visiting the council's website.
A written question had been received from Mr John Webb asking if the new fortnightly collection of residual waste was compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act with regard to the disposal of medical waste. The response was that clinical waste was categorised as being low risk waste. This included nappies and incontinence pants (known as Grade E clinical waste) and were to be double bagged as usual and disposed of via the normal collection - it was safe for this material to go to landfill. There was a clinical waste collection service for high risk waste.
The following points were made:
· the current waste recycling figure of 40% was county-wide, included municipal waste , black box collections and household recycling centres. The figure of 28% only referred to the kerbside collection in North Wiltshire. Higher collection rates were achieved when there was a fortnightly residual waste collection. Examples provided were 44% in the east and 43% in the west
· not all garden waste was suitable for composting
· secondary packaging could be targeted before reducing collection
· waste should be used to generate energy
· 50,000 tonnes per annum of residual waste was diverted from south Wiltshire and sent to an Energy from Waste facility out of the county
· recycling figures included all recycling and were formulated by government set performance indicators
· household recycling centres might be able to collect other types of recyclable waste if paper and plastics were removed , if kerbside collections were introduced to collect this material.
· this waste collection scheme may be better suited to rural areas rather than more highly populated urban areas
· the consultation was to be carried out online, through the media and through the area boards.
Councillor de Rhe-Philipe pointed out that in West Wiltshire the fortnightly waste collection was functioning well.